Cancer Society believes teens with cigarettes in their hands outside the country’s schools are poor role models for younger students.
Less than half of the nation’s schools have banned smoking for their students, according to a study conducted by the Danish Cancer Society.
During breaks from class-time hours, many students are allowed to smoke outside the school area – a trend that worries the society’s members.
In all, 46 percent of schools across the country have a complete ban on smoking for students during school hours.
But the figures are much worse in the Copenhagen area than, for example, in Jutland. In Region Northern Jutland – which includes Aalborg Council, where smoking has been banned at all private and public schools in the city – only 33 percent of schools still allow students to smoke during their breaks.
In the Capital Region, however, 74 percent have not instituted a ban.
‘That figure just isn’t good enough,’ Poul Dengsøe Jensen, project leader for the Cancer Society’s study, told MetroXpress newspaper. ‘The older students are role models for the younger ones, and the trend sets a very poor example from a prevention perspective’.
Axel Bech, president of Copenhagen’s principals’ association, agreed that the capital’s figures were troubling.
‘The problem is that a lot of the students in our city schools have permission to go off grounds during the breaks,’ he said. ‘So implementing a total smoking ban at the school wouldn’t accomplish much when the kids are able to move around beyond the school’s property’.
Bech suggested that rules regarding leaving school grounds be tightened and that students’ parents should be made to sign a non-smoking agreement for their children at the schools.
The Copenhagen Post
